Yet I Will Not Forget You: Nurturing a Dementia-Inclusive Church
By Leow Wen Pin
Published by Graceworks Publishing
Have sudden changes in the behaviour of someone you are close to left you feeling bewildered, frustrated or angry? This new book by Rev Dr Leow Wen Pin, Yet I Will Not Forget You: Nurturing a Dementia-Inclusive Church, might be able to help you recognise dementia.
This is the fourth book in a series written to support the ministry efforts of the Koinonia Inclusion Network (KIN), a disability mission organisation that enables churches in Asia to welcome and disciple people of all abilities. While it is intended as a practical guide for churches, this book will surely be helpful for anyone who has the difficult task of living with or managing a loved one with dementia. It is a focused, well-researched study where the author has drawn on several sources, and condensed his research into an engaging compendium of facts and truths about dementia (what it is, its types and characteristics), dementia population statistics, the social costs exacted by dementia and its spiritual impact on everyone. The book is illustrated with honest and very relatable stories by the family and caregivers of loved ones with dementia. These candid vignettes detailing their struggles and feelings are the flesh on the bones of the book.
In this rushed, achievement-oriented world, there is a natural, sometimes even unconscious, tendency to side-line and/or stigmatise people who are “less able”, such as those with dementia. However, the Church, the faith-community that is the Body of Christ, that includes all believers regardless of their “able-ness”, should and must do better. This is the book’s main message, and it is carried by the final four chapters that round it off: each chapter contains a clear-eyed, unvarnished testimony from each of four churches in Singapore which have started a ministry for the dementia-afflicted, their caregivers and family members. In the process of building their respective ministries, the four churches learnt how to refine some of their ideas to better suit their beneficiaries, and they freely admit to their failures and doubts. The one thread binding them all is this—the sense we get that every human effort we make honours God who is our hope, our Rock and Redeemer.
It will be helpful to read this book with a highlighter and pen handy, for it deserves a very close study.
To purchase the book, visit https://kin.org.sg/
Lucy Cheng is a volunteer Sub-Editor for Methodist Message. She worships at Wesley Methodist Church.
